On Sun, Apr 21, 2013 at 12:55:34PM +1000, David Zuccaro wrote:
I'd like to get a new desktop computer system; I'm currently using a 1.8 GHz C2D with 2 GB of memory with debian squeeze. It doesn't seem up to the job any more; HD movies are choppy; iceweasel is sluggish.
1. RAM as others have mentioned, 2GB of RAM is not enough these days. if you can upgrade the RAM in your current computer to 4 or 8GB, you might be able to avoid upgrading everything else. if your current motherboard takes DDR3 RAM, it's worth first trying anyway - if it doesn't fix all your performance problems, you can re-use the DDR3 RAM in a replacement m/b. an 8G kit of DDR3-1333 RAM starts from around $58. btw, DDR-1333 or DDR3-1600 is probably good enough. you can buy faster RAM (1866 or 2133 or even higher) but you're unlikely to notice any significant difference in system performance....certainly not enough to be worth paying significantly more. OTOH, DDR3-2133 costs $73 for an 8GB kit, only $15 more than DDR3-1333 so might be worth considering if your apps process large amounts of data in RAM (gimp, maybe) if your m/b takes DDR2 RAM then it' still possible that upgrading RAM alone may be enough, but it's a bigger gamble....if it doesn't work, you'll just be throwing the money away unless you have a use for a 2nd computer after you buy a new one. DDR2 is pretty much obsolete, and more expensive than newer DDR3 - 4GB of DDR2 costs $56. 2. VIDEO CARD you don't mention what your current graphics card is, or what driver it's using - or whether it has hardware video decoding features that your video software (Totem aka Movie Player in gnome?) makes use of. You may find that simply upgrading the video card along with the RAM will improve movie playing performance. And, again, it's worth trying because a new card can be re-used if you end up having to replace the computer. spending around $150 for a mid-range card should be enough for now and for the next few years - you pay a massive premium for higher end cards and IMO they don't offer enough performance gain to be worth the extra money (unless you're a gamer with a ridiculously large budget) for around that price, you can can get an nvidia 650Ti ($155), Radeon 7770 ($135) or Radeon 7790 ($165) both AMD Radeon and nvidia GPUs have open source drivers (built into the kernel), but they lag behind the closed-source drivers (both available as dkms packages for debian) for both performance and features. (personally, i still mostly use nvidia cards with the closed source nvidia drivers. they just work and have given me no hassles over the years. i've been waiting for years for the open source drivers to be good enough. i do have some machines using the open radeon or nouveau drivers, and for some purposes, they are good enough. mostly, though, i still prefer the closed nvidia driver) Alternatively, if you do go for a new system with an i7 CPU, you may find that the built-in Intel GPU is good enough - they're low-end if you're a gamer, but more than adequate for video playing, and they have good open source drivers. BTW, i can't remember whether squeeze is still Gnome 2 or if Gnome 3 is available....wheezy, however has gnome 3. If you run gnome 3, you *will* need a good graphics card, it has so much irritating animation and other pointless bling that it runs like a dog without a good modern GPU. (and if gnome3 pisses you off, you can always switch to xfce...you can still run gnome apps but without the brain-damaged tablet-on-a-desktop interface. xfce is quite similar to how gnome 2 was before the gnome3 abomination made gnome unusable :)
I'm thinking of getting something along the lines of:
i7 3.4 GHz
ok, you probably mean the i7-3770 at around $309. a great CPU, built in Intel HD4000 graphics, and only draws a maximum 77 Watts. LGA1155 socket, so a large range of motherboards to choose from. btw, it's worth spending money on a good quality motherboard - if the m/b is shit, the entire system will be shit. whenever i upgrade a system, I spend at least ten times as much effort comparing the differences between motherboards than i do for all other components combined. if you don't care about the built-in graphics, an AMD FX-8350 may be a good option. Windows gamers gave the AMD bulldozer (1st generation) and piledriver (2nd gen) CPUs bad reviews, but they've always been great for multi-tasking and multi-threaded performance on linux, especially the 2nd gen piledriver chips (which fixed many of the flaws in the original bulldozer series). The FX-8350 @ $209 is $100 cheaper than the i7-3770, and a decent AM3 motherboard is also about $50 to $100 cheaper (e.g. Sabertooth Z77 for i7 @ $244 vs Sabertooth 990FX for AMD CPUs at $197) the price difference is about enough to pay for a mid-range graphics card. one of the really nice things about AMD CPUs is that AMD actually care about upgradability - you can pretty much assume that if you get a current generation motherboard (currently "AM3") then it will be compatible with at least the next generation of CPUs and probably the generation after that. e.g. an AMD AM3 motherboard can take any AM3 CPU from the $39 Sempron LE-145 to the $209 FX-8350. They can also take the discontinued Phenom II CPUs (not available new anymore, and probably not worth hunting for 2nd hand) AMD have already stated that they'll be releasing the 3rd generation "Steamroller" CPUs for the AM3 socket next year. Intel, by contrast, seem perversely and deliberately confusing & anti-upgrade with motherboard chipsets and CPU sockets....you can safely assume that any future upgrade will require upgrading almost everything - motherboard and CPU and probably RAM.
4GB DDR3
8GB is better, and only costs another $30. RAM is cheap, and the more you have, the better - avoid swapping and cache disk access.
2 TB HD
as Russell suggested, a RAID-1 array is better/safer. but if you don't need the extra terabyte of storage, 2x2TB drives is a lot cheaper than the 2x3TB drives he suggested.
I'll probably stick with debian but I might try out ubuntu and linux mint distros.
if you're happy with debian then switching to ubuntu will probably annoy you (recent ubuntu releases even annoy many ubuntu users). mint might be worth a try, or perhaps aptosid (aka sidux - based on debian sid). craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>